Tonight on MSNBC I watched a bit of the ultimate and eternally young Catholic boy, Chris Matthews who though he acts like a Royko is actually a Philly kid, and … I dont care what anyone else says, by my sights, he zoomed to the top of the pile when he dared to start out his news program the day after Tim Russert suddenly died, by intoning The Hail Mary right off… right out loud.

“Hail Mary, full of grace,” he said, true to altar boy university somewhere. To mix a metaphor: Chris has got Catholic chutzpah.

He also has a producer with moxie. Tonight Chris aired a cobbled segement his producer edited from today’s ‘health care careless’ hearings. The segment solely focused on how many times each GOP Senator and spokespersons said the words

“need a step by step approach” to health care now
“need to start with a clean sheet of paper…”
and a few other phrases

The GOPers repeated these phrases via various folks, ad nauseam, making it clear that the GOP– before this televised hearing –had huddled and decided to hit the same four phrases over and over and over. Worse, it was a lesson for viewers in how good a troupe of actors these particular fellows were, as each pretended to be inspired to say these terribly original phrases spontaneously. That was the rooster’s crow: the politico’s delivery ‘as though’ sincere when in fact the whole act was rehearsed, well, er, ad nauseam.

I dont know, but couldnt they just have said it in their own words, each one, in some semblance of authenticity, instead of thinking we are too dumb to notice they’re following their coach’s first down pre-orchestrated play plan?

I dont mean to be disrespectful, but it reminded me of when I was old enough to get AARP mailings.. they’d ask me to write my congressperson, and apparently not trusting me to dodder through it on my own, sent along a short canned script I could just copy and paste, so our congresspersons received, ad nauseam, the same phrases over and over and over til his /her eyes turned into smoking red lasers. Listeners to these catchphrases on health care today, probably tuned the politicos out also. So much for planning to be heard by being as unoriginal as possible.

Chris, come on, put your producer’s brilliant edit job up on YouTube so everyone can see it and hopefully have a good-natured laugh about this peculiar form of political glossolalia. I feel certain we’re going to see, based on your producer’s film, perseverative politicians on Saturday Night Live very soon.

Soon enough the Demmies will do something equally funny. No doubt. Have. Will. All of ’em. And Chris’s producer will either pinion them too, or else maybe Chris will pray over them.

God knows each side could use serious prayer that the curse be broken and all politicos be returned to their actual human forms rather than continue to be trapped in some spellbound plasticized personhood.

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CODA
Disclosure: Ok, ok, I am a senior. Not in high school. And, I am a Catholic. Some of the best traits in both Catholicism and in being a senior are having a sense of humor. Because you have to. Otherwise it’s just Ionesco all the way home.